The present disclosure relates to a display panel drive device, and more particularly to generation of scanning line drive signals for a display panel.
In recent years, display panels such as plasma display panels, liquid crystal display panels, and electroluminescence panels have been used in many electronic apparatuses. In particular, high-definition display panels having 1,000 or more scanning lines are used in digital TV apparatuses.
In general, in a display panel, a frame is displayed by driving scanning lines sequentially. The sequential driving of scanning lines can be achieved using a shift register that includes the number of flipflops equal to the number of scanning lines. When such a shift register is applied to a digital TV apparatus, however, 1,000 or more flipflops will be necessary, and this will increase the circuit scale and cost of a display panel drive device. To solve this problem, arrangement is made to drive two scanning lines by one flipflop, thereby halving the total number of flipflops required (see Japanese Patent Publication No. 2002-132203, for example).
In the conventional technique described above, although the total number of flipflops can be halved, it is still necessary to provide 500 or more flipflops. Moreover, when the definition of display panels becomes higher and higher in future, the number of flipflops required will continue to increase, and thus the circuit scale will become increasingly larger.
In view of the problem described above, it is an objective of the present disclosure to provide a display panel drive device small in circuit area.